Taylor Berman

Remember the "There's an app for that commercial?" Well, that's still mostly true, I guess, unless, say, you wanted instant updates for the number of people killed by U.S. drones. Earlier this week, Apple rejected NYU student Josh Begley's "Drone+" app, which keeps track of drone strikes, including the approximate location and number of people killed. There was even an option for push notifications.

According the the Los Angeles Times, Begley received a rejection email from Apple on Monday evening, which said, in part:

"We found that your app contains content that many audiences would find objectionable, which is not in compliance with the App Store guidelines."

The New York Timesalso reports that Apple's email said the app was "not useful or entertaining enough."

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For his part, Begley was pretty understanding.

"I totally understand it from Apple's perspective," he said. "They don't want to have anything that could be considered controversial by anyone. I get that, and I understand that."

Perhaps because never saw the app as much more than an experiment of sorts. As he told the Los Angeles Times:

"The point is that we choose to get notified about lots of stuff on our own, like Twitter mentions, but even if we had access to this information about these drone attacks, would we choose to use it?" he said.

He added to the New York Times that he started the app "out of genuine curiosity."

Curiosity or not, Begley clearly cared about getting the app past Apple's censors; this was the third time it was rejected this summer. Which, as the New York Times notes, is strange, because an option on an Apple-approved Guardian app provides almost the exact same information, if configured correctly.